| #### Chapter 11 |

| #### #### In childhood the main activity is in the Couplement and there is but little irradiation from the higher principles of our being: but when these higher principles act but feebly or rarely upon us their action is directed towards the Supreme; they work upon us only when they stand at the mid-point. #### But does not the include that phase of our being which stands above the mid-point? #### It does, but on condition that we lay hold of it: our entire nature is not ours at all times but only as we direct the mid-point upwards or downwards, or lead some particular phase of our nature from potentiality or native character into act. #### And the animals, in what way or degree do they possess the Animate? #### If there be in them, as the opinion goes, human Souls that have sinned, then the Animating-Principle in its separable phase does not enter directly into the brute; it is there but not there to them; they are aware only of the image of the Soul [only of the lower Soul] and of that only by being aware of the body organised and determined by that image. #### If there be no human Soul in them, the Animate is constituted for them by a radiation from the All-Soul. ####  |